T

hree students from Artha Wacana Christian University'€™s (UKAW) School of Agriculture in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), have invented a device to transform wastewater into potable water.

The device, designed by Daud Umbu Moto, Sabatin Mosali and Susana Lasri, processes wastewater in three filtration stages using a number of filtering materials, including sponge, sand and synthetic cotton.

The device has been tested in several subdistricts in the drought-prone South Central Timor regency and at the school'€™s agriculture workshop, with the students successfully using the filtered water to grow mustard greens and several other vegetables.

On the back of the project'€™s success, the students are looking to develop the device and offer it as a potential solution to the long-standing clean water crisis in the province.

'€œOnly a fool would say Kupang lacked water. However, the government and local residents have let wastewater from households, buildings and industries be dumped at sea without finding a way to recycle and benefit from it,'€ Daud said.

UKAW agriculture science lecturer Zet Malelak, who supervised the students'€™ project, said that according to a study, every household in Kupang city produced an average of 500 liters of wastewater a day.

To follow up the research, Zet expressed hope that the Kupang municipal administration would equip each subdistrict in the city with a pool to contain wastewater so that it could be processed by the students'€™ invention.

'€œThe machine itself only costs Rp 2 million [US$150] to build. The processed water can be used to benefit local communities, for example to water city parks or irrigate nearby farmland,'€ he said.

Last month, the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) warned that the dry season this year could last longer than usual because of the weather phenomenon known as El Niño.

While the dry season in Indonesia normally takes place between April and September, the agency is predicting that the El Niño effect will stretch it out until November, affecting regions including South Sumatra, Central Java, Yogyakarta and NTT.

Thousands of residents of NTT'€™s South Central Timor regency have reportedly been suffering from a food crisis since earlier this year following poor harvests.

The device, Zet went on, should also be developed for use in hilly areas. The processed water, he said, could be retained in hilly areas and later channelled to lower plains where residents could use it to turn dry fields into arable farms.

'€œIn the future, we are also expecting to replace the use of electricity [for the device] with solar energy to save operating costs,'€ he said.

Contacted separately, the Food and Drug Monitoring Agency'€™s (BPOM) Kupang head, Ruth Laiskodat, confirmed that the agency had carried out a test to measure the quality of water processed by the device.

The BPOM study, according to Ruth, found that the clean water produced by the device was safe to be consumed.

'€œThe filters in the device, however, had to be replaced after each filtration process to ensure that it consistently produced potable water,'€ she said.

Kupang state tap water companies (PDAM) director Noldy Mumu, meanwhile, said his company was not as yet interested in using the wastewater processing machine invented by the students, saying that the device must first pass the Indonesian National Standards (SNI) certification.

'€œOur customers would be angry to hear that PDAM was using treated wastewater. However, I urge the students to continue with the research. The device will be gradually accepted if the public is already aware of its ability,'€ he said.